EFF Unveils Terms of Service Tracker

Remember the big bruhaha when Facebook tried to change its Terms of Service (TOS)? Well, the Electronic Frontier (DFF) Foundation has developed a service, TOSBack, to help you track the TOS of sites you use, to make sure you're not surprised in the future.

In the case of Facebook, users became so incensed that FB eventually backed down on the ToS changes, then moved to democratize them.

"Terms of service form the foundation of your relationship with social networking sites, online businesses, and other Internet communities, but most people become aware of these terms only when there's a problem. We created TOSBack to help consumers monitor terms of service for the websites they use everyday, and show how the terms change over time."

EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann added:

"Some changes to terms of service are good for consumers, and some are bad. But Internet users are increasingly trusting websites with everything from their photos to their 'friends lists' to their calendar -- and sometimes even their medical information. TOSBack will help consumers flag changes in the websites they use every day and trust with their personal information."

Interestingly, TOSBack noted a change to the FB Privacy Policy since May 28th. Nicely, the site presents the old and new side-by-side with changes in yellow. In this case, it was just an address change, but it does make it easy to track modifications.

I'm not sure if they meant to, but I'm betting they did: TOSBack could be pronounced "Toss Back," which is what users might want to do with Terms of Service changes they consider egregious.